Reading an essay by historian Tad Stoermer, The Physics of Resistance at Delaney Hall, prompted a thought.
“It is easy to be intellectual about current events until you place them in historical context.”
History has a way of disrupting certainty.
In the heat of political conflict, labels come easily. We decide who is acting responsibly, who is acting recklessly, who is defending the system, and who is threatening it.
Viewed through a historical lens, events can look very different.
During the civil rights movement, sit-ins, freedom rides, boycotts, and marches were often described by public officials as unlawful, disruptive, irresponsible, and dangerous. Participants were arrested, harassed, and denounced as agitators. To some Americans, they were courageous activists. To others, they were dangerous disruptors.
Today, many of those same actions are taught as examples of democratic courage. Their leaders are honored. Their tactics are studied. Their cause is widely regarded as just.
That does not mean every protest is justified. It does suggest something more unsettling. When conflict erupts, societies often focus first on the people resisting. Are they disruptive? Are they extreme? Have they gone too far?
Those questions matter. History often asks a different one.
Was the injustice they were confronting real?
That question is uncomfortable because it asks citizens to separate two judgments that often get collapsed into one. A protest tactic can be wrong, and the underlying grievance can still be valid. A movement can make strategic mistakes, and the institution it challenges may still have to answer for the condition being protested.
The same question underlies Stoermer’s essay about the protests at Delaney Hall, the New Jersey ICE detention center. Whether one agrees with the protesters or not, much of the debate centers on their tactics, their rhetoric, and the boundaries of acceptable protest. Associated Press reporting described clashes outside the facility, curfews, barriers, arrests, and official security concerns, while also noting that the confrontation followed a detainee hunger strike over alleged poor living conditions.
That is the tension. The public argument can quickly become about the protest itself. The deeper question concerns the conditions being protested and whether those conditions justify resistance.
The label “extremist” often tells us less than we think. It can name a real danger, or it can move attention away from the injustice that provoked resistance.
That judgment is easy to state and hard to practice.
A democracy can condemn protest tactics without letting those tactics become the whole story. A protest may be disruptive, poorly judged, or unlawful. Those facts matter. But they do not settle the deeper question. If an injustice is real, it remains real even when the protest is flawed.
That is the point most easily lost in public conflict. The confrontation becomes the story. The march, the arrest, the shouted words, the blocked entrance, the official statement, and the images moving across social media can quickly displace the issue that brought people there in the first place.
The public can judge the tactics. It should not let the tactics displace judgment of the injustice that made resistance seem necessary.
That does not make judgment easier. It makes it more honest. Some protests deserve criticism. Some institutions deserve defense. But neither conclusion should be reached by looking only at the surface of confrontation.
The question is not only whether resistance has crossed a line. The question is whether the condition being resisted crossed one first.
The consequences of getting that judgment wrong are borne long before history reaches its verdict.
Edward Saltzberg is the Executive Director of the Security and Sustainability Forum and writes The Stability Brief.
